The Phantom of The Opera (1986 Musical) - Allegations of Plagiarism

Allegations of Plagiarism

In 1987, the heirs of Giacomo Puccini charged in a lawsuit that the climactic phrase in "Music of the Night" closely resembled a similar phrase in the sequence "Quello che tacete" from Puccini's opera Girl of the Golden West. The litigation was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.

In 1990, a Baltimore songwriter named Ray Repp filed a lawsuit alleging that the title song from Phantom was based on a song that he wrote in 1978 called "Till You." After eight years of litigation — including an unsuccessful countersuit by Lloyd Webber claiming that "Till You" was itself a plagiarism of "Close Every Door" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat — the jury found in Lloyd Webber's favor.

Roger Waters has repeatedly claimed in interviews that the signature descending/ascending half-tone chord progression from Phantom's title song was plagiarised from the bass line of a track on the Pink Floyd 1971 album Meddle called "Echoes." He has never taken any legal action ("Life's too long to bother with suing Andrew fucking Lloyd Webber"), but he did add an insulting reference to Lloyd Webber in his song "It's a Miracle": "We cower in our shelters/With our hands over our ears/Lloyd Webber's awful stuff/Runs for years and years and years/An earthquake hits the theatre/But the operetta lingers/Then the piano lid comes down/And breaks his fucking fingers./It's a miracle!".